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character chat

It’s been…what, about a month? since the mid-season finale aired, and I’m still feeling totally unsettled about it. There’s just this weird, discordant, unresolved feeling that I’ve been left with. I keep thinking each Monday will bring me some kind of resolution, but no. I have to wait for that. I watched the finale when it aired and was just shocked when it ended. That couldn’t be the end. That wasn’t an ending. Every other season finale has very decidedly resolved the story and then set us up for the next one. Not so now. And I know that technically this was just the Season 5A finale, and not the complete season finale, but when they did an extended season in Season Three, each half was its own separate story with very little cross over. I mean, those two halves are so distinct that I have trouble remembering the nogitsune story line was actually Season Three. In my head the nogitsune was Season Four and we’re currently in the middle of Season Six.

I’m beginning to ramble. Okay, suffice it to say, I was not prepared for this lack of a resolution. And am feeling a little unsettled because of it.

So if I have trouble making this discussion of Scott’s fall make sense, well…I’m sorry.

The first ten minutes of last week’s episode were harrowing. No joke. First with Stiles being attacked by a supernaturally enhanced Donovan, fighting tooth and nail for his life, and then, after inadvertently causing Donovan’s death due to self defense, with his control spiraling as he could do little more than breathe through a 911 call and then wait in his jeep for the police to arrive, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. My heart was pounding, my hands were shaking, and I felt like I could feel every once of terror that boy was radiating. Dylan O’Brien deserves all the praise he’s getting for that performance, because he didn’t speak a word during that entire opening and was still able to convey so much: so much fear and anxiety and loss and guilt.

As of yet, no one else knows what happened. Stiles was alone and, though the police responded to his 911 call and checked out the crime scene, someone else (well, Parrish) had already come by to claim the body and Stiles kept himself out of sight. For now, he’s only got himself to deal with, only his own feelings to parse and dissect. But I can’t imagine he’ll be able to keep this secret to himself for long. We’ve been told all through the hiatus and all through this first half of the season that we’re gearing up for a major rift between Stiles and best friend Scott. And though part of it will surely come from Stiles’ obsessive suspicion against newcomer Theo, I have a feeling that Scott’s black and white morality issues are going to play a major part as well.

I made myself wait a little over 24 hours before I allowed myself to start Season 3 of Orange is the New Black. I felt I needed to get myself prepared. Because when I did start watching, there was no stopping me. Yes, it took me a few sittings, seeing as I do in fact have a life outside of television and this blog (surprise, surprise!), but even then it only took me a day or two to have the whole season finished.

I write this blog not just because I want to put my own thoughts to paper, but because I like to engage with other people when it comes to television. I like seeing what other people think. Sometimes I find people who are just so incredibly smart with the subtleties they pick up on or the meta they want to discuss. I’ll read other reactions or analysis and it’s like a whole new world has been opened up in front of me when they point out something so excellent that I’ve missed. Other times, I find myself wading into an opinion on an episode or a character that is just so, so the opposite or anything I agree with that it just boggles my mind with its absolute wrongness! But either way, I appreciate people who make me think, whether it’s by opening up my mind to a new way of looking at something or by making me sort through my own feelings to better articulate why I disagree so heartily.

It’s funny, I wasn’t planning on doing a complete rewatch of Leverage any time soon, and yet here we are. I actually have a kind of schedule (because I am a majorly too organized dork) of what I’m watching, catching up on, or starting over and Leverage was not on that list for a while. But I guess a couple of weeks ago I needed something to put on while I folded laundry or something like that and one thing led to another. It screwed up my whole schedule, but it’s such a good show that I guess I can forgive it. Not to mention it gave me an opportunity to reorganize my viewing calendar and I like planning things.

Like I said, I’m a giant dork.

The thing about rewatching great shows is it’s always such a treat to discover something new about a thing you already love. Maybe there’s a character that never really stood out to you before or a piece of the puzzle that just all of a sudden clicks with you. There’s always something you missed.

So Glee ended a few weeks ago. It had what I thought was a decent finale. An hour flashback to see the pilot episode from the kids’ point of view, rather than Will Scheuster, followed by an hour of saying good-bye and getting a glimpse into the future. Those two episodes made for a nice full circle kind of feeling, seeing where the original five came from and then where they ended up.

But watching 2009 got me thinking about something. Something I’d had a fleeting thought about awhile ago, but never really explored. Rachel didn’t have too much of her own story in this episode, since we’d seen her decision to join the glee club in the pilot. But she was a bit of a catalyst in Mercedes’ story. And it was her part in Mercedes’ story that got me thinking, and made me rewatch several of Rachel’s voiceovers and story lines throughout the series to further think through this little theory I have. And here it is.

It’s been hard, these past few episode since Captain Lance found out the truth about Sara, to watch him spiral back into the man we we were first introduced to. He was a man without compassion, one who was consumed by his own grief and helplessness. His rage was cruel and vindictive, placing blame for his loss where it wasn’t deserved. But he seemed to have come a long way since then.